High Stakes on the Track and Off at Chantilly

In addition to the nine races on the card, the day’s festivities include the much-anticipated Prix Mademoiselle Diane competition, with a prize awarded to the wearer of the most elegant woman’s hat.Credit
Thibault Camus/Associated Press

CHANTILLY, France — For female racing fans, the Prix de Diane would seem to be all about relaxation: Wear a fashionable hat and outfit, sip a flute or two from the Champagne bar and have a light picnic on the Chantilly hippodrome’s sun-dappled infield before picking up a racing card.

But for their female counterparts on the track — the fillies who will vie for the crown in 164th edition of the French classic this Sunday — the day is typically fraught with more tension.

The Prix de Diane is the most important annual test in France for 3-year-old fillies. Along with a purse of €1 million, or $1.3 million — of which nearly €600,000 goes to the winner — success in the race leads an owner to think about entering the filly into Europe’s richest contest, the season-ending Arc de Triomphe in October at the Longchamp course in Paris. Further down the line, a victory this weekend brings the promise of a long career at stud once a filly’s racing career concludes.

“For fillies, the Prix de Diane is an extraordinary race,” said Matthieu Vincent, director of Chantilly’s hippodrome and training center. “The winner of a Group One race like this will end up at the stud farm, certainly.”

Group One races are the highest stakes contests in Europe, as certified by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities, and are subject to age and gender restrictions. Often, a race’s title belies the restrictions. In Derbies, such as the Epsom Derby in England or the Prix du Jockey Club — the French Derby, which is also held in Chantilly in June — only 3-year-old colts and fillies are allowed to enter.

The Prix de Diane is known as an Oaks race, in which the field is limited to 3-year-old fillies. English speakers sometimes refer to the Diane as the French Oaks. The oldest Oaks in Europe, first run in 1779, is held annually at Epsom Downs in England.

Although the Prix de Diane, named for the Roman goddess of the hunt, wasn’t established until a half-century later — in 1843 — it has evolved to become an important event in its own right on the European calendar.

Indeed, when the 12 horses post for the race at about 3:45 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, it will be the culmination of months of careful planning by trainers and owners.

At 2,100 meters, or 1.3 miles, the Diane is considered a long-distance race. To succeed, fillies must build up endurance gradually in the spring through a combination of training and selective competition.

Take a race favorite, Silasol, sired by the recently deceased Monsun.

She started her campaign for the Diane in the autumn by capturing the Prix Marcel Boussac, a 1,600-meter Group One race for 2-year-old fillies that features contenders for the next season’s classic races. After training for much of the spring, she ran her first race this year in April, the 1,850-meter Group Three Prix Vanteaux, before a come-from-behind victory in the Prix Saint-Alary, a 2,000-meter Group One race in late May.

“The Marcel Boussac is great, because it gives the best 2-year-olds a chance, but there are some horses who are precocious and don’t make the transition very well,” said Carlos Laffon-Parias, a Spaniard who trains Silasol at Chantilly.

So Silasol’s successful spring schedule, he said, particularly her title at the Saint-Alary, was “very encouraging.”

The Saint-Alary is one of the two spring classics that often portend success in the Diane; the other is the Group One Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, a 1,600-meter race run in mid-May. Although 11 horses have done the Alary-Diane double, 25 have won both the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches and the Diane.

Flotilla, trained by Mikel Delzangles, will be looking to make it 26 this weekend. Although the filly finished fourth behind Silasol in the Bussac in October, she went on to capture the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf in November at Santa Anita Park in California before coming out of spring training to win at Longchamp last month.

Flotilla, daughter of Sinndar — the Arc de Triomphe winner in 2000 — is a more “interesting” pick to win the Diane this year than Silasol, said Desmond Stoneham, a former Racing Post correspondent now with the International Racing Bureau in Paris.

“Behind Silasol at the Bussac, it was a strange race,” he said. “It was a race that had little patience and Flotilla never really showed her true form. But in the Breeders’ Cup, she won that easily. She had time to come to hand.”

Other horses to watch on Sunday include Altérité, who finished second at Saint-Alary, and Ésotérique, winner of the Prix Vanteaux in April, ahead of Silasol.

Most surprising about the start list, however, is the absence of an entry from the Aga Khan, winner of a record seventh Prix de Diane crown last year with Valyra, who had to be put down a few months later after a beach-cantering accident.

The Aga Khan, who is owner of the Aiglemont estate in Gouvieux, near the Chantilly hippodrome and château, and has a stud farm in Normandy, often has multiple entries in what amounts to a home race for him. Last year, the race included three Aga Khan-owned horses.

The Prix de Diane will not be the only competition on Sunday afternoon. It headlines a nine-race card that is preceded by picnicking and a concert by the French pop singer Nolwenn Leroy.

But perhaps more important than the undercards will be the Prix Mademoiselle Diane, awarded to the wearer of the most elegant woman’s hat.

The Prix de Diane is a staple of the early summer Parisian social calendar. While many of the 40,000 spectators expected at Chantilly will be dressed in finery, women’s hats are the fashion order of the day — and the more feathery or flowery, the better. There is no need to be a runway model or society matron to win the title, though. The prize last year went to Charlène Pestana, a 19-year-old student at the Paris Institute of Political Science.

“With the fillies, the women and Diana, the goddess of the hunt, it’s really a day of elegance at Chantilly,” Vincent said. “It’s a bit like Royal Ascot, you know, but it’s not so English. You have to be en forme at Royal Ascot. Here, there’s not an obligatory dress code.”

The two grand racing events have drawn closer, however. Since Longines took over as title sponsor of the Diane in 2011, the race date has been pushed back a week from its typical calendar slot, so as to not overlap with the last weekend of the French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros Stadium in western Paris, an event also sponsored by the Swiss watchmaker.

The change means that it runs within days of Royal Ascot, the marathon five-day English racing event that kicks off on Tuesday.

While a week of nonstop parties may sound exhausting, many, like Stoneham, who will attend both events, are embracing the new schedule.

“The Diane is now the entrée before the Royal Ascot,” he said. “There are five days at Ascot, where men wear morning coats, women wear fabulous hats. Before the five days of that, this is the appetizer.”